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Looper's Delight
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About releasing digital releases of your music, Per Boysen wrote: "IMHO this digital age also means that you should be even more careful, than in the old days, to only release the top quality of your work. The reason for this view is that with digital distribution there is no limited issue that will sell out at some point in the future, as with physical media like CD, vinyl and DVDs. Digital releases will stay available for ever. A smaller quantity of music is just as easy to find in search- and recommendation engines as a huge artist catalog. This also may makes it more relevant to talk about "launching" than "releasing". " I see your point, Per. It's well thought out and I respect it, but I have a slightly different perspective to share. Sometimes the fact that an artist is very prolific (if they back it up with quality of course) can be a very attractive attribute. It can tell us something about their artistry. I think of an artist like Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices fame. He releases 2 to 3 releases every year and has for decades. Because of the quality of his work, he has hard core fans who snap up everything he releases and older physical versions of his records (especially in collectable forms like colored vinyl or accompanying artwork----he's a really excellent collage artist) fetch really high prices. Arguably because he is not a mass acceptance style of artist, it could be argued that he can make a living with his artistry ONLY because he is prolific. If , like most artists, he releases a record every couple of years or so, he probably wouldn't be able to make a living doing what he's doing. I think about someone like our own Erdem Helvacioglu, who is ridiculously and excitingly ambitious and in the process of making records with a very large number of people in different genres, seemingly simultaneously. His ambition alone will really serves his reputation, I think. I , myself, think, "wow, what's he going to do next? .........it puts him on my own artistic radar precisely because he is prolific. I, myself, really want to express myself in many different ways: as a live looping/found sound artist, a toy video 'animator', an acoustic singer/songwriter (that's coming up in the future he says, gulping!), a goth/industrial pop artist, an noise/experimental artist, a world ethnic fusion artist and a jazz artist so in order dto express myself, I have to be prolific as an artist. In my own case, I don't know whether this hurts me in terms of ultimate number of sales (the diversity and number of releases) but it brings up another salient point: In my own career, being prolific both in terms of creating new venues , associating myself with different styles of music that I love, putting out releases, et. al. has helped my career and my reputation to the point that people will frequently hire me to do concerts, lectures, seminars, productions, commissions for modern dance and video/films, collaborate, etc., etc. In this way, being prolific really helps me out, even if I don't have high record sales. ******* A great visual artist once said something to the effect that "being prolific as an artist is an act of spiritual generosity' To me, just putting out a high volume of work (if your hearts really deeply into it) sometimes is an end unto itself and the fact that we put it out to the world, is a form of generosity. There also is the smaller phenomenon that occasionally people want to support an artist just because they admire them or because they actually want a high quality audio or visual experience that transcends the downloadable MP3 world that is our present dominant paradigm. One of the ways of getting people's attention is by being prolific, artistically. It's not, of course, the only way, but it is A way.